I made a coat [with smoochy lips AND the flu]

Damn. I sewed the buttons on too tight.

Four or five years ago, two different sewing bloggers posted beautiful projects using this same embroidered wool. I have no idea who they were now, those memories have long been wiped clean from my brain. One was a young girl from California who made a short cape out of it, and then a lady from Michigan (Mary?) who made a skirt. Mary was kind enough to share the store where she found it, so I called them and ordered the last three yards on the roll.

And then it sat.

And sat.

I pulled it out last winter, but just couldn't bring myself to sew anything, and so back it went.

Finally, this fall I started looking for a suitable pattern for it. I've been terrified of ruining the fabric, but I had this realization - it wasn't doing me any good sitting in a box in the basement!  I went back and forth between a few vintage patterns and a few modern, and finally settled on Burda 7072. I liked the shorter sleeves and the princess seam pockets, it had a vintage vibe without being a vintage pattern.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving week. I had the whole week off since I'd been hoarding my vacation days {i.e. burning myself out unnecessarily} and sewing was high on my list of Things To Do.

Time is precious around here; I don't have hours on end to sew uninterrupted when the kids are home, but that lends itself perfectly to a project like this. I would go downstairs, work on one task, and then set it aside for a few hours or a day. It virtually guaranteed I was fresh every time I touched the coat, I think that helped a lot.

It also helped a lot that my sons constructed a new fort in the closet under the basement stairs. That kept them busy and out of my hair.

These steps happened between Monday and Wednesday...

Cutting out the pattern pieces was interesting, as I was trying to maximize all of the embroidered fabric, which only ran along one side. I had to turn it crosswise to cut it. After inspecting the fabric for any moth damage, I did find a few holes but they ran along the selvage, so it's possible they were damage from the manufacturing process, too.

Anyway, the weave on this is fairly loose. I knew I needed to stabilize it, but my experience with interfacing pattern pieces for a wool coat was not great. When I did that on a heavy black wool coating, it added way too much bulk to the seams. This gray is fairly light, though, and since I couldn't figure out how to pick and choose what to interface, I decided to do it all.

Each piece got interfaced with Pro-weft supreme Medium fusible interfacing from Fashion Sewing Supply. I'm really impressed with it, this was the first project I used it on, and it does give body and support while maintaining drape. Excellent.

Then I had to make a decision about interlining. My lining is silk, the wool has a loose weave, and we do have a proper winter here. So after much hemming and hawing, I settled on using white muslin fabric to interline it. I could have gone with something lighter like silk organza, but I didn't want to wait for shipping and I'm happy with the muslin. I was sewing with dark gray thread and the interlining was white, so that made picking out any stitches easy!

One of the first decisions I had to make was the buttons and buttonholes. I knew if I wanted bound buttonholes I had to make them first, but the idea of sewing them through four layers of fabric (fabric, interfacing, interlining, welt) scared the crap out of me.

Pause to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family....

Onwards and upwards, I practiced bound buttonholes Friday afternoon on scraps of fabric. They went ok, so I forged on with four bound buttonholes, and four corresponding welt holes.  They're not perfect, instead of perfectly matched slots they look more like smoochy lips but I'm ok with that.

This pattern is perfectly drafted and the instructions are total crap, as per usual with Burda. The sleeve/undersleeve/side pieces get attached to the front and back by sewing a 90 degree angle, but you would never have known that by reading the instructions! The first one was such a disaster, I unpicked it all and lay in bed that night visualizing what I had to do.

Total crap corner.

Sew up sleeve, place needle, pivot and clip corner, sew down side. I went downstairs first thing in the morning to try it again.

Voila! Four perfectly sewn sleeve corners. Whew. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Until I realized that the lining pieces would have to be constructed exactly the same way. Eight perfectly sewn sleeve corners? Holy crap, that's pressure. But I did it, I plowed through it.

And then this happened...

My oldest son got super sick the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and tested positive for influenza A. My youngest took the hit on Sunday afternoon. It was fun, and by fun I mean go out and get your flu shots because this sickness is real and it sucks. I was diagnosed Tuesday.
 

Well, that was rough. What little energy I had disappeared, and yet I still had hours of sewing left! There's a reason they call these types of projects labors of love. I'm not sure I was feeling love at this point.
 

This blog post is starting to feel as long as the process of making the coat! On-seam pockets (once again, craptastic Burda instructions that have you sew the pocket to the side seam with a 5/8" SA. Huh?? By offsetting pockets with a 1/4" SA, the pocket lays nicely inside and you never see it. Why wouldn't they tell you that?? I did it anyway. They could have also been generous and given us a 1" bump out on the pattern pieces, but I am probably asking too much.

There are a few things wrong with these pictures. 1) I had ten minutes to snap them. 2) I sewed the buttons on too tight so it's pulling across the chest and 3) my tripod was set down too low by one of my kids.

My lining is a silk twill I bought for $3 a yard at Hancock's many years ago, when they were selling out of their silks. I ended up with four or five lengths of wild patterned silks, perfect for linings.

Sorry. Blurry photo.

I bagged the lining, but since my facing piece was not sewn on and wasn't notched out at the bottom, I had to make up my own method for attaching the bottom and turning that corner. All of the internet tutes I could find (and the Threads tutorial that has nicely drawn diagrams) are for sewn-on facings with a notch out. I made do. It looks the same, maybe the order of attachment is different, I don't really even care at this point.

This pattern calls for the back piece to be cut and seamed. I assumed that meant it was shaped. NO. It is not. I could have cut it on the fold. Dammit!

At this point, I was at mile 23 of a 26.6 marathon. My legs were jiggly, I avoided eye contact with the coat whenever I walked by it on the dressform standing in the stairwell to the basement (she wore the coat for me to avoid it becoming a crumpled mess but I think that may have happened anyway), and I broke out in a sweat at the thought that I still needed to make covered buttons and sew them on.

Sweet Lord above, did I really want this coat that badly?

Apparently I did.

The buttons were made. I hated the look of them. I shopped for another week for buttons I didn't hate, and landed on these. The coat is done. And so am I.

I need to press the bottom. I apologize for the crapbag photo quality.
And wouldn't this coat look fab with long gloves and a matching faux fur cowl??

OK, maybe I'm not done. Just ready to make something simple. Like a t-shirt. Or leggings.

And shop for long gloves!

The coat-cape continues...

I really wasn't sure for a while there if I was going to continue down the road to completion with my cape-coat-cape. Those interfaced sleeves are just really bugging me and sadly I do not have more fabric to do them over again.

So I let it sit for a few weeks. My dressform, Lydia, wore it silently and I looked at it every time I walked by her. Which was a lot, considering I have yet to move Lydia from my dining room to the basement sweatshop.

I started a minimum of four more projects in the meantime. OneTwo, total wadders. One, a prototype of something super exciting I hope to share the pattern for this spring (free, of course). And one a vintage knit top waiting to be hemmed.

And still, I just couldn't find the energy to tackle Sherlock again.

Until today! Voila, out of the blue, I just wanted to work on it. I need to start trusting my instincts now and again. Today's progress was at least forward moving. I got the pockets installed and the princess seams tweaked. I put together the collar and attached it. And then...then I had the moment that I dread in every project. That moment when I put my hands to my cheeks and say "oh chit."

In a moment of inspired lunacy during cutting out the coat-cape, I put off cutting out the center back facing. I had added width to the pattern pieces and since that piece is a curved piece, I decided I would wait to cut it out until I had the body put together and knew the exact measurements.

And then I threw away my scrap fabric.

Yep, you got that right. I threw away the fabric before the project is even close to being done. I don't remember doing it, but I'm sure my thought process went something like "Oh, I don't have enough to save for anything big like another front section, and I'm pretty sure it fits ok, and I'm not even sure I'm going to finish it, and I took a pledge to keep my sewing area clear this year...." and so on. Scratch that part where I trust my instincts. Clearly, they can't be trusted.

So now I must wait until tomorrow when I will be scouring the local fabric shops for 1/4 of a yard of black melton wool to match my 20 year old fabric. The odds are less than excellent.

However! This post is not entirely a downer. I did manage to snap some photos of something that might help someone.

You remember how I made bound buttonholes? Well, this coat's front is self-faced, and for the longest time I could not find a tutorial on bound buttonholes that actually explains what to do on the underside. I finally did run across a paragraph (no pictures) in an ancient Singer book that tells you to "make buttonholes" on the facing side and stitch in the ditch to attach the pieces before moving on.

So I did that. I made three buttonholes that match perfectly to the bound fronts, and as soon as I sit back down at the machine I will be stitching in the ditch to attach them. And praying I interpreted that right?


That's it for me. I hope to be able to share pics soon of the three (yes, THREE) dresses I made in the last few weeks that I can't wear. Maybe someone out there can help me....

Making progress - vintage Vogue 7044

The Batman coatcape is taking shape. Now I know why I don't make a lot of coats. They're crazy time-consuming! I like instant gratification in my sewing projects, not projects that drag on for weeks, as this one literally could considering my other commitments for time (kids, job, husband, house, kids, kids, job, etc).

I squeezed in an hour of sewing today and got the body constructed, at least loosely. You know what? The fit isn't that bad! Apparently my pattern upsizing (from 32 bust to 38) was at least a success, that's good news.

The bad news? Those cape sleeves probably shouldn't have been interfaced. I know, the pattern called for it but with the interfacing they tend to hold their bow shape a bit too much and kind of bell out. Also? That line of interfacing along the seam is a little bubbly. I did steam-shrink the interfacing before pressing, but it was a bear to press along that seam crease using my ham.


I need to adjust the shoulder line on one side, can you see how it's sticking up?


More good news - the bound buttonholes look lovely, and the pocket placement (I raised it a little) is spot-on. I'll be shortening the length to hip level sometime this weekend. Maybe. If I get time. And if I can stop thinking about a jersey knit dress I want to make for my meeting in Atlanta next week.

See, a jersey knit dress is a one-day project. I like one-day projects. This coatcape thing is becoming a two-week project.

One interesting note about the construction of this capelike garment - it's actually a lined vest with the cape sleeves attached at the princess seams. I was so confused about the assembly and just followed the directions, and voila - it suddenly became obvious why they were asking me to sew the front and back together at the sides and shoulders!

Forging on....

Sherlock Holmes? Why yes, Batman, indeed it is. Vogue 7044

When we last left our ate-up heroine, she was steadily plodding along with the underlining of her vintage Patou jacket project. Sadly, that jacket has been moved to the side due to some misgivings I have about the general fit. Not to worry! I picked up a new vintage project last week and that's what I'll be making for the Great Vintage Sew-Along.

I like to call it the Sherlock Holmes-meets-Batman coatcape. It's a coat with cape sleeves, and I'm making it out of black melton wool my mom gave me that had been in my grandma's stash for a while. We're 99% positive it's Pendleton, as all of her woolens were Pendleton.

On a whim, I decided to forego the muslin this time and just give it a go. Muslins haven't served me particularly well, considering I made two for the Patou jacket and it still doesn't look like I got the fit right? This may turn out to be my Waterloo because I had to resize this pattern from 32 bust to 36. Who am I kidding, I'm probably more like a 38.

I started off by interfacing the entire body with Palmer Pletsch Pro-tailor interfacing, recommended by quite a few better sew-ists than me who recently completed the Winter Wear contest on Pattern Review. It was on sale over the New Year so I splurged.

After spending all that time cutting and interfacing, I was so excited to get started on the project! Note to self in choosing sewing projects - cutting fabric, lining, underlining and interfacing and then ironing on all said interfacing takes SO STINKING LONG. Reconsider coat projects in the future. I digress.

I finally got to start sewing!


First step? Make three bound buttonholes. Something I've never done before. But I've made plenty of welt pockets so I followed this tutorial and carefully measured, marked and stitched and I am really happy with how they've turned out.

As you can see, my first buttonhole was off by exactly one stitch. Easy fix, thank goodness, since they have to line up exactly the same.



The second step is assembling the cape sleeves. I'm underlining the coat with houndstooth flannel, hence the crazy print on the inside. The seams and hemline are also interfaced with more Tailor-pro.



That's as far as I've gotten. I hope to get the sleeves lined and attached tonight, and then hopefully start in on the body work maybe tomorrow night? I have a three and four-year-old underfoot so my sewing is usually done in very short spurts! Here's hoping for another long stretch.